The Supreme Court on Friday posted for January 3 TMC leader Mohua Moitra’s plea challenging her expulsion from Lok Sabha in the alleged cash-for-query case.
The court said it will resume its working from January 2 – after two-week Christmas and New Year holidays.
Justice Sanjiv Khanna, heading a bench also comprising Justice S V N Bhatti, said, “I got the file very late at night. Glanced through it for five minutes in the morning. I will like to go through the file.”
He asked senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, “Can we keep it on January 3rd or 4th?”
Moitra had approached the Supreme Court against her expulsion from Lok Sabha in the cash-for-query case on December 8. She was expelled in the wake of a recommendation by the ethics committee for her disqualification as an MP.
Moitra had moved the top court on December 11.
The ethics panel found her “guilty of unethical conduct” and called for “an intense, legal and institutional inquiry’ by the government “in a time-bound manner” into the cash-for-query allegations against her.
The report claimed she visited the UAE four times from 2019 to 2023 while her login was accessed several times.
Moitra, who was not allowed to speak during the discussion in the House, said the ethics committee broke every rule. She alleged she had been found guilty of contravening a code of ethics that ‘does not exist’.
Moitra further stated that the findings of the Ethics Committee are based solely on the written testimonies of two private citizens whose versions contradict each other in material terms and she was denied the right to cross-examine them.